Deborah Crombie - Necessary as Blood

“With Charlotte, or with their money?” Kincaid asked.

“Charlotte. I don’t think either of them cared that much about the money, except as it provided for their child.”

“Will there be much?” Kincaid thought of the house in Fournier Street, and of prices he’d seen in the area estate agents’ windows.

“Yes, a good bit, I think. The value of the house may have dropped a bit in this economy, but it will still be worth a small fortune. They didn’t owe much on it. And Naz was always careful. They didn’t spend much on themselves, other than what they put into fixing up the house, and he invested the rest.”

Kincaid thought for a moment. “All this is assuming, of course, that Sandra Gilles doesn’t walk back into the picture tomorrow.”

“Unfortunately, yes,” said Lou Phillips. “And as long as Sandra is missing, things are going to be very complicated, indeed.”

“I’m going out for a bit. I’ve got to run an errand.” It was the mid-afternoon lull, and Gemma had caught Melody in the corridor outside the CID room. “All the case assignments are up-to-date. Ring me if anything urgent comes up.”

“What are you up to?” Melody said quietly. “You’re not going to see Charlotte’s grandmother, are you?”

Gemma wasn’t in the mood to confide in anyone. “I just need a bit of fresh air.” It was true enough, Gemma told herself. Although the weekend’s brutal heat had relented, it was still warm, and her office was miserably stuffy. Her head was splitting from staring at the computer screen, and she was beginning to wonder why she had ever wanted a promotion to a desk job.

“I won’t be long,” she added, and with that, she ran down the stairs and out the front door of the station. On the steps, she bumped into a uniformed male constable, who grinned and said, “Where’s the fire, guv?”

“Corner shop,” she said, smiling back.

“Coffee and ciggies for me, then,” he called after her, and she waved back.

She turned into Ladbroke Grove. Having decided not to take the car, as she didn’t want to get caught in rush-hour traffic coming back, she walked up to Holland Park and took the District and Circle to Kings Cross. There, she changed for Old Street, and as she stood on the platform, closing her eyes against the warm wind from a train going in the opposite direction, she mulled over what she was doing. It might be rash, but she felt compelled by the bond she had formed with Charlotte. Who would act if she did not?

What she hadn’t told Melody was that she’d rung Doug Cullen and asked him to look up an address in Sandra Gilles’s file.

“Roy Blakely?” Cullen had asked. “Who’s he?”

“According to Tim, Blakely was the last person to see Sandra Gilles the day she disappeared. I just want to talk to him about Sandra. I don’t know that he has any direct connection with Naz Malik, so don’t worry, I’m not trespassing on your investigation.”

“That means you’ve told Duncan?” Cullen had said suspiciously.

“No, but I will.” Gemma had begun to feel irritated. “Just give me the address, Doug. I’ll sort it out with him later.”

But by the time she climbed the stairs at the Old Street tube station and emerged, hot and sweaty, into the street, she was beginning to wonder if this had been such a good idea after all. Then she looked up and saw the Ozone Angel , and felt again the odd sense of connection with Sandra she had experienced that first night. Yes, she needed to do this, and if it stepped on toes she would just have to deal with the consequences.

She walked on down Old Street, her stride relaxing into a long, easy swing. As she neared Columbia Road, she turned off into a side street and consulted the address she’d scribbled on a scrap of paper, then her A to Zed. A few more minutes brought her to a cul-de-sac filled with relatively new flats. They seemed more like town houses, Gemma thought as she looked at them more closely, houses with two stories and sloping red tile roofs, set in blocks surrounded by pleasant landscaping.

Roy Blakely’s flat was on a corner of one such block. It had a neatly tiled front entrance, and the front door stood open. Gemma peered in as she pushed the bell, but the interior was in shadow and her eyes hadn’t adjusted from the glare of the sun. She heard the faint sound of a television, then footsteps, and a man entered the hall.

“You from the gas board, darlin’?” he asked, looking at her approvingly. “Damn sight better than the last geezer they sent.” His accent was decidedly Cockney, and he was solidly built, perhaps in his fifties, with muscular shoulders shown off by his white T-shirt. His thick silver hair was cut short, and fine silver down glinted on his bare forearms.

“Mr. Blakely?” said Gemma.

“In the flesh. What can I do for you?”

“My name’s Gemma James, and I’d like to talk to you about Sandra Gilles.”

Roy Blakely’s friendly face was instantly shuttered. “Can’t help you, darlin’, and I’ve got work in me garden. So-”

“Mr. Blakely, wait. I’m a police officer, but I’m not here officially. I’m here because I’m concerned about Charlotte Malik, Sandra’s daughter. Did you know that Naz Malik was dead?”

“I heard from some mates who saw it in the paper, yeah. I’m sorry about that. But what’s it to do with me? Or Sandra? Look, I’ve told the police everything I know about that day a hundred times.” He started to swing the door shut.

Gemma made a last-ditch attempt at persuasion. “You knew Sandra well, didn’t you, Mr. Blakely? What would you say if I told you that Sandra’s mother was petitioning for custody of Charlotte?”

“Gail?” He paused, his hand still resting on the door, and scowled at her. “You said you weren’t here ‘officially.’ What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s a long story, Mr. Blakely, and it’s a hot day. If we could just talk somewhere cool…” She pushed the damp hair away from her face.

“You criticizing my Cockney hospitality, darlin’? That’s a right insult, that is,” he said, but the scowl was less fierce. “All right, then. Come and sit in the garden, and I’ll make you something to drink.”

He pushed the door open wide, and Gemma followed him into a sitting room that was dimmed by the light pouring in from the double glass doors in the back. The doors stood open to an oasis of green, splashed with bright colors. The voices she’d heard were louder, and she realized it was the radio rather than the telly, playing somewhere else in the house. She recognized a BBC 4 presenter, and caught something about gardening.

Then she stepped out onto a flagged patio shaded by the house, surrounded by raised beds so thick with plants that there was not an inch of bare soil. She recognized brilliant orange and yellow roses shaped into trees, a profusion of bee-swarmed lavender in one border, a drift of plumbago in another, and a lemon tree. As for the rest, she was hard-pressed to come up with names. The spicy scent of the lavender tickled her nose.

Two carved wooden chairs stood to one side, and a long worktable against the rear of the house held pots and tools and seed trays.

Roy Blakely shifted a chair for her, then came back a moment later with a plastic tumbler of water, cold from the fridge.

“Thanks.” Gemma took it gratefully. “I walked from Old Street. Your garden is lovely. Did you design it yourself?”

As Blakely sat on the edge of the other chair, Gemma noticed the mud stains on the knees of his jeans.

“I’m a one-man Ground Force , darlin’,” he said. “Now, what’s this all about? Are you telling me that little Charlotte is with Gail?”

Gemma set her glass down on the flagstones and leaned forward. “Not yet. Charlotte’s in foster care for the moment. But Gail is her nearest living relative, so unless the court has good reason to decide against her petition, Charlotte will go to her.”