Necessary as Blood

CHAPTER TWENTY

So the house has a mission, and it believes that the natural state of human intelligence is not-like a painting-flat or square, but like this room it extends out and all around us. The house plots to work its magic to ensure that each visitor goes away with that perception. It may already have begun to happen to you.

– Dennis Severs, 18 Folgate Street: The Tale of a House in Spitalfields

Although the sun was far from setting, the neon signs burned over the curry palaces of Brick Lane. Many of the restaurants advertised air-conditioning, but the doors stood open, and the pervasive smell of Indian spices mingled with the dust and petrol fumes of the street.

Some of the less prosperous places had touts outside to lure tourists in with practiced patter, although Kincaid seriously doubted whether the restaurants ever gave the refunds so persuasively offered.

Ahmed Azad’s place, however, was easily picked out by its sleekly modern frontage. The closed front door hinted at real air-conditioning, and the interior Kincaid glimpsed through the window was minimalist, with brick walls, gleaming wooden tables, and sculpted leather chairs. There was the barest hint of an Indian theme in the deep orange-red patterned place mats and coordinating linens. The prices posted on the menu in the window were a little high, but not stratospheric, and there were quite a few diners, even at the early hour.

Sergeant Singh had told him that there would be queues later in the evening, even on a weeknight, and that the food wasn’t “half bad.” He guessed that coming from her that counted as a compliment. “Angla-Bangla, of course,” she’d added, “but they do it well, and they manage to sneak in a few more authentic dishes.”

Most of the diners, Kincaid saw, were in Western dress, but there were very few women. When he stepped inside, he was met by a blast of cool air, and then by a barrage of aromas that made his mouth water.

The waiters looked as sophisticated as the interior, all young men dressed in black shirts and trousers. Kincaid wondered if there had been anything about Azad’s great-nephew that made him stand out of the mix.

It was not one of the waiters who came forward to greet him, however, but Azad himself, wearing another expensive-looking suit cut for his rotund frame.

“Mr. Kincaid,” Azad said, shaking his hand. “To what do we owe the pleasure? Have you come to sample our cuisine?” Although his tone was friendly, his dark eyes were sharply alert.

“I’ve heard it’s very good, Mr. Azad, but I’ve just come for a chat, if you have a minute.” Kincaid’s stomach was telling him that it was a long time since he’d had lunch. But as tempted as he was by the aromas, he didn’t want to put himself at a disadvantage with Azad by becoming a customer.

“I take it this chat will not require my solicitor’s presence?” The question seemed to be rhetorical, as Azad smiled and motioned him forwards. “Come into my office. Perhaps you would like to try a chai tea?” Without waiting for Kincaid’s response, he signaled one of the waiters and barked an order in rapid Bengali.

He led Kincaid through the restaurant and into a small room to one side of the partially open kitchen. The office was clean and utilitarian, but the walls were adorned with fine photographic prints of a lush, green landscape that Kincaid assumed must be Bangladesh.

By the time Kincaid had taken the chair Azad offered, one of the black-clad waiters appeared with a glass mug of a milky, fragrantly spicy tea.

“You serve alcohol?” Kincaid asked, having noticed wineglasses on some of the tables.

“I don’t drink it, Mr. Kincaid, but this is a business.” Azad shrugged his padded shoulders. “If you want to be successful, you must please the customers.”

“It seems you have quite the City clientele.” Kincaid sipped his tea and found, rather to his surprise, that it wasn’t as sweet as he’d expected, and that he liked it.

“They have money to spend, and a little more refined taste than the average tourists, who just want their chicken tikka masala. But why should this be of interest to you, Mr. Kincaid?”

“Because I was wondering what you could tell me about Lucas Ritchie and his club.”

Lou Phillips lived in what Gemma guessed was a newer terrace, near the bottom end of Columbia Road, but the buildings were unusually constructed. While the ground-floor flats had little open patios, each pair of first-floor flats seemed to open onto a shared balcony, served by its own staircase.

Gemma checked her address again-yes, Louise Phillips’s flat was one of the first-floor pair at the end of the building, the one with the jungle of plants and flowers filling the balcony.

The one with the German shepherd dogs. There was an iron gate at the top of the stairs, and the two big dogs sat just inside it, watching her with what seemed a friendly interest.

A young man came out of the left-hand flat. He had spiky, bleached-blond hair and stud earrings, and wore a black T-shirt emblazoned with the enigmatic slogan GOT SLIDE? Giving the dogs a casual pat as he went by, he clanged out the gate and clattered down the stairs. As he passed Gemma, he said, “’ullo, love,” and gave her a cheeky grin.

Had he come from Louise Phillips’s flat, wondered Gemma? But no, according to the number, Phillips’s flat was the right-hand one. At least the dogs seemed friendly enough.

But when Gemma started up the stairs, both dogs stood, and the larger one gave a sharp bark. Gemma stopped, unsure of what to do. The doors to both flats stood open, and she was about to call out when a man wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt came out of the left-hand flat. He had brown hair drawn back in a ponytail, impressively muscled legs, and a pleasant face, and he carried a large old-fashioned watering can.

“You here to see Lou?” he called down to her. “Don’t mind the dogs. They’re a good combination of doorbell and burglar deterrent, but they won’t hurt you.”

The dogs’ tails had started to wag at the sound of the man’s voice, and they looked pleased with themselves, as if they knew they were being talked about. Gemma kept climbing, still with a bit of trepidation, but as she neared the top the man called the dogs to him. “Jagger, Ginger. Sit,” he commanded. The dogs sat, but their tails were wagging furiously. Their black and reddish-tan coats were glossy, and the expressions on their alert, intelligent faces seemed almost human.

“Jagger and Ginger?” said Gemma, stopping at the gate.

“As in Mick Jagger and Ginger Baker. My partner manages rock bands. The names are his little homage to the greats-although I doubt any of his current crop are likely to fill their boots. Except maybe Andy there,” he added, nodding in the direction the young man had disappeared in. “I’m Michael, by the way.” He came forward and opened the gate.

Gemma stepped through, and the dogs seemed to consider the gate shutting behind her as their release signal. She stood still as they came charging towards her, then let them sniff her thoroughly with their long, damp noses. She was glad she was wearing trousers and not a skirt.

“Here, I’ll call them off-,” began Michael, but Gemma stopped him.

“No. They’re lovely. They’re just getting acquainted with my dogs.”

“Ah, no wonder they like you. I take it you’re not here for Tam?” When Gemma shook her head, he glanced into the open door of the right-hand flat, calling out, “Lou, you’ve got a visitor.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” said the same slightly irritable female voice Gemma had heard over the phone.

A moment later, a woman appeared in the doorway. “Sorry, sorry,” she said. “Had to get out of the business suit and the bloody tights before I died. It should be against the law to wear things like that in this weather. You’re Gemma?”

The shorts and halter top Lou Phillips had changed into should have shown off her coloring, but Gemma thought her dark skin had a grayish tinge to it, and her bared shoulders were unflatteringly bony. Her dark hair was scraped up into a ponytail that lacked the élan of the one worn by her neighbor Michael.

“I’ve got the keys,” Phillips went on, without waiting for an answer. “If you’ll just make me a list of the items you take and return it with the-”

“Actually,” Gemma broke in, “I was hoping we could have a chat.”

Louise Phillips stared at her for a moment, then sighed. “All right. I suppose we can talk. But only if you like gin and tonic. And we’ll have to sit on the balcony. I can’t smoke in the flat, or Michael and Tam won’t let the dogs come in. Don’t want them exposed to secondhand smoke.” She rolled her eyes at this, but Gemma saw that there were two chairs on her side of the balcony, and an ashtray between them. “And they make me wash out the ashtray every day,” Louise grumbled as she led Gemma into the flat. Sotto voce, she added, “I cheat when it’s cold. I open the back window.”

“You’re not fooling anyone, Lou,” Michael called from the balcony, but his tone was affectionate. “We can smell it on the dogs’ coats.”

“Nazis,” Louise called back, but she smiled. “How Tam survives taking the bands to rock clubs, I don’t know. But now even those have been taken over by the no-smoking brigade.”

The flat was cluttered, apparently furnished with cast-off odds and ends, and most surfaces were covered with books and papers. The small kitchen at the back, however, was relatively neat, and Gemma suspected it was because Lou Phillips didn’t cook.

There was a lime on the cutting board, beside a tall glass and a bottle of Bombay gin and another of tonic. “Easy on the G for me,” said Gemma. “And heavy on the T. Have to drive.” She watched as Louise got another glass and filled both with ice, gin, and tonic, adding only a splash of gin to Gemma’s.

“Have you been here long?” Gemma asked. “It’s an interesting flat.” She accepted the drink Louise handed her. Tasting it, she found it delicious, the tartness of the lime and the bitterness of the tonic the perfect antidote to the heat.

“Ten-no, eleven years.” Louise was already pulling the cigarette packet from her shorts as they walked back through the flat. “I found it just a few months after Naz and I bought the practice.”

When they reached the patio, Louise sank into one chair, her cigarette already lit, while Gemma took the other. She saw that the ashtray was indeed clean.

Michael had gone inside the other flat, but the dogs remained, stretched out on the cool concrete, panting gently.

“Are you the green thumb?” Gemma asked, admiring the profusion of flowers and plants, only a few of which she recognized.

“Lord, no. That’s all Michael’s doing. He’s a floral designer, and living so close to Columbia Road is mecca for him. I kill everything I touch, and Tam’s not much better.”

“Did Michael know Sandra, then? From when she used to work the market with Roy Blakely?”

“Oh, Michael knew Sandra. But then it seems that everyone knew Sandra.” Louise exhaled a long stream of smoke and ground out her half-finished cigarette. “Sandra had a way of insinuating herself into people’s lives.”

“Insinuating?” Gemma asked, a bit puzzled by the word choice.

“I don’t mean that in a negative way. It was just that Sandra was interested in everything and everyone, and she made connections, and the connections made connections…”

Gemma thought about the unlikely-seeming thread between Sandra, and Azad, and Lucas Ritchie, and Pippa…and imagined those tendrils multiplied, exponentially. “How could someone who knew so much about everyone else reveal so little about herself?” she asked, as much to herself as to Louise. “No one I’ve talked to seems to know anything about Sandra’s background, or her relationship with her family-except maybe Roy Blakely, and that’s only because he’s known her family for years.”

“Naz knew enough,” Louise said flatly. Lighting another cigarette, she dropped the cheap plastic lighter. It rolled off the table to clatter onto the concrete, but Louise didn’t reach for it.

“What do you mean?” Gemma tried to keep the quickening of interest from her voice.

“And why does it matter to you?” The gaze Louise Phillips fixed on Gemma was sharp, a reminder that Phillips was, after all, a lawyer, and that, regardless of the gin and tonic, not much slipped past her.

“Because I care what happens to Charlotte,” Gemma said simply. “And I don’t believe that Sandra’s mother will provide a good-or safe-environment for her,” she added, thinking that such an understatement only touched the tip of the iceberg.

“Naz would have agreed with you.” Draining her gin and tonic, Louise placed her glass on the table with great deliberation. “And I let him down.”

Ahmed Azad didn’t blink. “Why should I be able to tell you anything about this Mr. Ritchie?”

“Because you belong to his club,” Kincaid answered.

“Ah.” Azad drew out the word, and his small smile conveyed no humor. “I see someone has been indiscreet. But no matter. It is no great secret, although some of my more-should we say, observant-brothers might be less than approving.”

“Was it Sandra Gilles who introduced you to Lucas Ritchie?”

“As a matter of fact, it was, yes. They were old friends, I believe, and Sandra thought our association might further my business interests.”

“And did it?” Kincaid asked, drinking more of his tea.

Azad glanced out at the restaurant and lifted his hand in an encompassing gesture. “It is always good to have connections. I could not run this restaurant strictly on the custom of Bangladeshis, and some of my…connections…have provided the occasional cash infusion. With a good return, I must say.”

“And yet you’ve had trouble with the white community, I understand, Mr. Azad. Vandalism, was it?”

“Do you call throwing rocks and gasoline bombs through the window ‘vandalism,’ Mr. Kincaid? Perhaps you do not take it any more seriously than did your colleagues?” Although Azad’s voice remained level, Kincaid sensed a deep-coursing anger.

He wondered what it took for this man to keep it buried when he socialized with the white, City types at the club in Widegate Street-men who had never known prejudice, never experienced the violence of a Molotov cocktail, never trembled in fear of a mob.

“I’m sorry the police weren’t more helpful, Mr. Azad,” he said genuinely. “Do you have any idea who might have been responsible?”

Azad looked at him for a long moment, then stood and walked over to one of the lush, green photographs on his office wall. Studying it, he said, “It is always our dream, Mr. Kincaid. To make our fortune here, then to go home to Sylhet as rich and respected elders, the envy of all our neighbors and relatives. But for most of us, it does not happen. Our lives are here. Our children’s lives are here. We do not want to make difficulties with those who become our friends, our associates.” He fell silent.

“You knew them,” Kincaid said quietly. “And you didn’t tell the police. Who were they, Mr. Azad?”

Azad didn’t turn. “I saw their faces. They had their hoods up, like the thugs they are. But still, I recognized them. Sandra Gilles’s brothers.”

Standing abruptly, Lou Phillips picked up her glass again and rattled the ice in it. “I’m going for a refill. Do you want another?”

Gemma shook her head. “No, thanks. I’m fine,” she said, but she stood as well and followed Louise back inside the flat. In the kitchen, as Louise broke a few more ice cubes from the tray and plunked them in her glass, Gemma asked, “What did you do, Louise? How did you let Naz down?”

Louise half filled the glass with gin, then topped it off with tonic. “After Sandra disappeared, Naz rewrote his will. He asked me if I would be Charlotte’s guardian.” She turned, leaning against the work top, but didn’t meet Gemma’s eyes. “I said no.”

Gemma stared at her in disbelief. “Why?”

“Because…because I didn’t think anything would happen to Naz. Because I thought Sandra would come back. And then, when she didn’t, I thought-I began to wonder-I know most of these things are…domestic.” She looked at Gemma now, appealing. “It’s my job. Yours, too. We see the worst.”

“As in it’s usually the spouse? You thought Naz was responsible for Sandra’s disappearance?”

“God help me.” Louise reached for her glass and wrapped visibly unsteady hands round it. “I suspected him. I didn’t see how he could have done it. But he was so different afterwards, so distant-I thought…And I was so angry with him because he shut me out. If he talked at all, it was about this friend, this Dr. Cavendish, when Naz and I had been friends for years. I was jealous. It was petty of me, and stupid. And now…now I can’t put it right.”

“Can’t you? Louise, couldn’t you change things now, as executor? Isn’t there some way you could take legal responsibility for Charlotte?”

Louise shook her head. “No. The will was witnessed. It will stand.” She hesitated, then said, “I’m sorry I didn’t do what Naz wanted, I really am. But even if it were legally possible, I couldn’t take care of Charlotte.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I-I’m not cut out for it. I don’t-I’m fond of Charlotte, but she never really…warmed to me. This”-she looked towards the balcony-“this place, and Tam and Michael, this is all I’m likely to have in the way of family. I’m just not suited to looking after a child.”

“And you think Gail Gilles would do better?”

Although it was a struggle to keep her temper in check, Gemma had gone back out to the balcony and sat for a while longer with Louise. She had tried to imagine Charlotte with Louise, and found to her dismay that she couldn’t.

There was something about Louise, something more than her obvious grief, that wasn’t quite right. She seemed damaged, crippled in some indefinable way, and there was a solicitousness in the way Michael and his partner, Tam, looked after her.

In the end, she had got Louise to agree that she would do what she could, if Gail should gain custody of Charlotte, to restrict Gail’s access to the estate’s funds.

And then, as she drove the short distance to Fournier Street in the fading light, Gemma wondered if that had been a wise request. Would putting a damper on the money only make Gail more likely to mistreat the child?

She parked across from Sandra and Naz’s house, struck once again by the contrast between the severity of the church at one end of the street and the play of neon from Brick Lane at the other. How hard had it been for Sandra and Naz to balance between the two worlds? And the two cultures?

Once inside the house, she switched on lights and opened the garden door in an effort to bring in light and fresh air. In just a few days, the house had begun to smell musty, and ordinary dust had gathered on the furniture, joining the black powder left by forensics.

She walked through the rooms, feeling oddly divided between a sense of trespass and a sense of aching familiarity. In the sitting room, she picked up a stray picture book and a stuffed toy, stowing them in their respective containers, just as she would have in her own house.

Then she climbed the stairs to Charlotte’s room. She found a flowered holdall in the wardrobe and began to fill it with things from the chest of drawers. She held up a pink-printed sundress with a matching white cardigan, remembering the little girls’ clothes she had looked at in the shop windows when she was pregnant, daydreaming of the daughter she would dress.

Carefully, she folded the sundress and cardigan, then reached for a jacket in the same corally pink, a pink-and-white-striped T-shirt, and white cuffed dungarees. Then a yellow eyelet top with a pink-and-yellow-flowered skirt and a pair of pink-and-white ballet flats. Had Sandra loved picking out these things, just as Gemma had imagined doing?

She added a few more clothes and more worn stuffed toys-company for Bob the elephant-and the most well-thumbed of the picture books on the table by the bed. The photo of Sandra still stood beside the books. Gemma hesitated, but in the end she left it. Not yet, she thought. It was too soon for such a vivid reminder.

She made notes for Louise of the things she’d taken, then, leaving the bag on the landing, she climbed up to the studio.

The cup of colored pencils stood on the worktable, just where she had remembered. Looking round for a box or a bag, or even an elastic band to contain them, she was struck once more by the beauty of the collage Sandra had left unfinished.

The Caged Girls, as she had come to think of it. The shrouded, unfinished faces of the girls and women were haunting, and she wondered what story had motivated Sandra to design this piece-and who had been the intended recipient.

Still searching for an elastic band, she moved to the desk and rifled through the drawers. The shallow one held the flotsam and jetsam that accumulated in desks as if drawn by magnets-broken pencils, defunct pens, paper clips, and pennies. There were a half-dozen colored elastic bands, but they were too small for the bundled pencils. Pulling the drawer all the way open, Gemma saw a bit of paper crumpled at the back. She fished it out and smoothed the crinkles. It was a receipt, written out to Sandra Gilles for one pound, in payment for an unspecified work of art, and stamped with the name and address of the Rivington Street Health Clinic.

Gemma remembered seeing a clinic on Rivington Street when she’d gone to Pippa Nightingale’s gallery-was it the same place?

On an impulse, she took out her notebook once more and found the page on which she’d written Pippa’s number. As she looked in her bag, she found one of her own elastic hair bands, which she thought would do quite nicely for the pencils.

Bundling up the pencils, she put them in her bag, then took out her mobile and rang the number for the Nightingale Gallery. It was late, and Gemma had begun to think it a wasted call, but after a few rings, Pippa answered the phone.

Gemma identified herself, then asked about the Rivington Street clinic.

“That was one of Sandra’s good-works projects,” Pippa said with asperity. “I told her she couldn’t just give things away, but she wouldn’t listen.”

“They paid her a pound. I found the receipt in her desk. What sort of clinic is it?”

“That sounds about par for Sandra’s record keeping. At least she left a proper paper trail for the Internal Revenue.” She gave a derisive sniff, then went on. “The place is a free sexual-health clinic that caters mostly to local Bangladeshi women.”

Gemma had been gazing at the piece on the worktable. She described the piece in progress to Pippa, then asked, “Do you suppose she was thinking of the women who go to this clinic? Or that she was making it for the clinic?”

“It’s possible,” Pippa said thoughtfully. “But it sounds as if the piece has a very strong Huguenot theme, which was something Sandra came back to again and again. She was fascinated by the lives and history of the French immigrant weavers, and she felt a personal connection-she wanted there to be a personal connection. Gilles is a French Huguenot name, and because Sandra never knew her father, I think it was important to her to try to find something meaningful in her mother’s lineage. Not that her mother knew or cared.” Pippa sighed. “You might look at her journals.”

“Journals?”

“Sandra kept scads of them. Black, artists’ sketchbooks, filled with notes and drawings. That was where she worked out her ideas. They may be worth a good bit of money if she-” There was a pause, then Pippa said, “Look. I’ve got to go. But if you find those books, you’d better make a note of it for the estate. And have whoever’s in charge contact me.”

Clicking off the phone, Gemma looked round the room, thinking that Pippa Nightingale might be grieving for Naz and Sandra, but she was not about to let it interfere with business.

Gemma moved away from the desk and worktable. Hadn’t she seen black notebooks somewhere, when she was here before? Yes, there, on the shelf with the boxes of buttons and ribbons and the other objects Sandra used in the collages-at least a dozen identical black books.

Lifting the top one from the stack, she opened it and thumbed carefully through it. Notes, in many colors, the tiny script crammed into margins and any vertical and horizontal space not filled with drawings. And the drawings…Gemma looked more closely, fascinated. There were designs; some looked like bits of fabric, others seemed to be architectural details-Gemma thought she recognized the ornate curved lintel from a house opposite, and the Arabian curves of the decorative arches in Brick Lane. There were even tiny reproductions of some of the street art Gemma had seen sprayed along Brick Lane. And there were portraits. Asian women, young and old. A grizzled, shabby man under a striped market awning. A drawing that suggested, in just a few deft lines, the sweet face of a young Asian girl.

Gemma closed the book and held it, thinking. This was Sandra Gilles-here, in these pages-or at least all that Gemma, or Sandra’s daughter, might ever know of her. Pippa had suggested that the notebooks would be valuable, objects of desire for collectors, but what about their value to Charlotte? Surely, that was more important.

Setting aside the notebook, Gemma rummaged in her bag until she found her own little spiral notebook, and the list she had been making for Louise. She stared at the page for a long moment, then put the notebook back.

Carefully, she gathered all the black sketchbooks from the shelf, added the bundle of pencils from her bag, and left the studio.

On the way down the stairs, she retrieved Charlotte’s flowered holdall and tucked her acquisitions inside.

Reaching the ground floor, she turned out the lights and locked the garden door, then let herself out of the house and locked the front door as well.

She glanced up and down, as was her habit, but the street was empty. Walking quickly to her car, she opened the rear door and leaned in, meaning to place the bag securely on the floorboard.

Then, a hard shove slammed her forwards, cracking her head against the Escort’s roof.

Staggering, shaking her head, she instinctively dropped the bag, clenched her keys in her fist, and spun round.

There were two of them, crowding her, so close she could smell the mingled odors of sweat and beer.

They must have been waiting round the corner in Wilkes Street, to have come on her so fast. One man was bigger, heavier, with pouches under his hard blue eyes; the other was thinner, acne scarred, jittery.

And she knew them.